A Separation
Ratings12
Average rating2.6
15
Ratings12
Average rating2.6
"A mesmerizing, psychologically taut novel about a marriage's end and the secrets we all carry. A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go and search for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship, and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love. A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished, and transfixed"--
"A taut, complex portrait of a marriage haunted by secrets, in which a woman finds herself traveling to Greece in search of her missing, estranged husband"--
Reviews with the most likes.
I really struggled with the number of stars to give this book. Though the prose is beautiful and there are some very moving passages on the nature of grief and relationships, I found myself wondering when it would be over. Katie Kitamura has a unique voice and though I never wanted to abandon the book completely, I also didn't find myself counting the minutes until I could pick it up again.
Meh. An unnamed narrator is so passive that she lets her estranged husband tell her not to tell anyone they're separated. The she lets her mother in law send her to Greece to track the husband down because he is not answering his mother's phone calls and she feels she can't break her word not to tell her husband's mother that they are separated.
The narrator also tends to imagine what is going on in the minds of the people she observes and assume that she imagined correctly.
The narrative is written with commas in many places where there should be periods, which I found distracting.
Finally, the blurbs I've seen for this book make it sound like a thriller or a suspense story. Don't be fooled. It's not.
